Safety Initiative Phase II: International Regulatory and Government Perspectives

Uniting the global cultured meat ecosystem around matters of safety with Phase II of the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI)

2022 - 2023

Overview

The Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI) is a joint initiative between New Harvest and Vireo Advisors aiming to address critical technical, methodological, and informational challenges related to evaluating the safety of cultured meat (CM) products.

CMSI involves the convening of diverse stakeholders, including industry, governmental scientists, regulators, academic researchers, and others. Gaining such varied perspectives advances public knowledge and the practice of food safety for CM products by identifying and addressing data gaps. Research conducted to develop data and methods build the necessary support elements for the emerging ecosystem, which can raise regulatory and consumer confidence, support industry efforts toward commercialization, and improve the efficacy of evaluation processes of regulatory safety reviews.

Building on progress from Phase I of the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI), New Harvest and Vireo Advisors convened governmental scientists and regulators from 15 jurisdictions around the world to identify governmental priorities for the safety methods, data, and research needed to support safety evaluation of cultured meat products to reach commercial markets worldwide.

What to see what happened next? Check out CMSI Phase III!

Updates

July 2023 – The peer-reviewed publication is published as an open access article in the journal Foods.

April 2023 – Findings are published as a preprint while in the peer-review process.

October 31, 2022 – With the support of the Singapore Food Agency, an in-person workshop was held at the Singapore Food Safety Research Center, co-hosted by New Harvest and Vireo Advisors.

November 16-17, 2022 – Two virtual workshops were held with governmental scientists and regulators, co-hosted by New Harvest and Vireo Advisors.

Collaborators

This initiative was conceived of and carried out in partnership with Dr. Jo Anne Shatkin and Dr. Kimberly Ong of Vireo Advisors, an expert advisory consultancy focused on the safe and sustainable commercialization of new technologies.

The publication was authored by Kimberly J. Ong,¹ Yadira Tejeda-Saldana,² Breanna Duffy² Dwayne Holmes,² Kora Kukk,¹ and Jo Anne Shatkin¹

¹Vireo Advisors

²New Harvest

Donors

This initiative was made possible thanks to the generous contributions of five visionary individuals: Soroush Pour, Lejjy Gafour, Andras Forgacs, Gabor Forgacs, and Kristin Ellis, and to the 23 corporate donors listed below.

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The Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI) is a joint initiative between New Harvest and Vireo Advisors aiming to address critical technical, methodological, and informational challenges related to evaluating the safety of cultured meat (CM) products.

CMSI involves the convening of diverse stakeholders, including industry, governmental scientists, regulators, academic researchers, and others. Gaining such varied perspectives advances public knowledge and the practice of food safety for CM products by identifying and addressing data gaps. Research conducted to develop data and methods build the necessary support elements for the emerging ecosystem, which can raise regulatory and consumer confidence, support industry efforts toward commercialization, and improve the efficacy of evaluation processes of regulatory safety reviews.

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